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Rh was brought about, as an infringement upon liberty. Nevertheless, there must be economic account of that development, just as of the introduction of cord tires and tungsten lamps and improvements in business organization, which exemplify the real factors that enable a people to attain a higher scale of living.

This subject may be most intelligently examined through the statistics of production and consumption. The production statistics, which have been summarized in a previous chapter, give only a partial picture; for there are some commodities whereof we produce a surplus that we export, obtaining in exchange for them other commodities, such as sugar, rubber, silk, flax, coffee and tea that we do not raise at all, or else but inadequately. It is therefore the statistics of consumption to which we need to refer in order to form a true idea respecting our seale of living.

Such statistics are not easily available. It is only with respect to relatively few commodities that we have data of the deliveries for consumption, which is a different thing from consumption itself. If we should make comparisons for single years, e.g., 1913 and 1922 we should arrive at misleading results, which I know from trial. If, however, we take averages for a series of years we shall do a good deal to iron out irregularities and even statistics of production of commodities that are wholly used at home may then be closely representative of true consumption. I have selected for comparison the three years 1912–14, as the period immediately before the war, and the three years 1920–22 as the period immediately following. These two groups of years therefore represent the beginning and end of a momentous decade.